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For duplicate artist pages that need to be moved, I've been told to make a note on Articles to be merged. I don't think it's listed anywhere on the Help pages and I don't really want to mess with them myself, so I think it would be helpful if someone could make a note there about the procedure for moving/merging artists. Also, we do have Template:Move, which I used to use, but nothing ever seemed to happen to the pages I marked (the category does seem to have been cleaned out since then though), so if we are using the merge page, I don't know if that template is necessary.

I've promised not to move artist pages without community consensus anymore, since I think I've been a bit too bold in doing so in the past without double checking my facts, but what should I do if I come across an obviously misnamed artist with only a few songs? For something like Joplin Janis (which has already been redirected), I would redirect/move all the songs listed on Special:PrefixIndex and then the artist page itself. Is there anything else I need to do to ensure the artist has been properly moved, or is this something only administrators can do? And if I can't move them myself, is there anything I can do to help?

I'm pretty sure you've covered everything. The only reason admins usually move artists is because they can do a batch move which will do everything you said with minimal effort (unless the target page for a specific move already exists, in which case that move must be done manually). So in the interest of saving time you can use the Articles to be merged page. I'm not 100% so maybe wait for an admin to comment? ♫LYRIC-Humbugwords♪deeds☘ 01:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Using the {{Move}} template is really the official way to get a move done that you can't do yourself due to the sheer massiveness of the project. As you noted, however, those moves don't get noticed as often as one would hope, and if you're working on a page as a pet project, that project can grind to a halt waiting for action. So...if you really, really, REALLY need an admin to do a Batch Move quickly, then you can also make a note to that effect here in the Community Portal. That way you're likely to get a DONE! fairly quickly. But, if you can do it yourself manually, then the method that you use is a good one, and you're certainly welcome to cut out the middle man (or woman). Using Kingnee's page is really not the way to go. He's not around much anymore and that page isn't likely to be on other admins' watch lists. I know it's not on mine. It looks as if 2 admins are watching it. Although with 58 things on the "To Do" list, things aren't happening very quickly there, either. :-] Kiefer talk contribs admin 03:38, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The User:Kingnee1114lyrics/Sandbox/Articles to be merged page was set up for a specific reason many months ago, but since then it seems to have become a replacement for the Requests For Moves page. However since the correct procedure when encountering incorrectly named artist pages is exactly as you described twomeanings, i.e. moving the artist page and all pages prefixed with the incorrect artist name, or requesting that an administrator moves these pages by placing the {{Move}} template on the incorrectly named artist page, I have today updated both the Help:FAQ and also the Category:Requests For Moves page.

Thanks for bringing our attention to this, because sometimes it's not until someone mentions something like this that we realize things aren't quite hunky dory. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 15:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The History Of Requests for moves speaks for itself [1], it was pretty much cleared 2 months ago. Little activity there...

A much larger number of artists were moved without any request from anyone, about 500 of them are on King's page hidden from the casual glimpse. The ~50 on the to do list and and (at least) a few hundred more artist pages still need to be moved/merged/unified; once all artists have been disambiguated, (hint: there are over 20,000 artists without hometown) There are various indexes to help with this task... ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 16:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC) and all of a sudden over 120k redirs have disappeared...works for me ;)

Yes Echo, you and S2E2 have done, and indeed are continuing to do, an excellent job working through the artists category looking for duplicate/wrongly named pages and correcting these. In fact your efforts these past months probably go a long way to explaining the current inactivity on the Requests For Moves page! All Kiefer and I are saying is that there is a procedure which should be followed when people encounter a wrongly named artist page and that procedure is not to leave a note in an administrators sandbox.

If the editor is experienced, like twomeanings, then they can move the pages themselves. If however they do not feel confident in doing this, or are simply unable to move the pages for other reasons, then the {{Move}} template should be placed on the artist page which will categorise the artist page in Category:Requests For Moves.

Requests For Moves is just a different page to work from, but one that is referred to in the Help pages and which is therefore accessible to all. This doesn't change anything in so far as your assistance in moving these pages is still required, because as we both know administrators can only batch move pages if the target pages do not exist. If they exist, these pages have to be done manually. This is what a lot of users do not understand of course. It is also why a lot of the requests that were put into that category before you became "Bot Master" were left for longer than they should have been. Because what is a herculean task for general editors to do manually is equally a herculean task for administrators to do manually too. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 21:43, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It's great that you take the time and trouble to add additional info appertaining to the song, but since this presents a few problems on the song page, could I ask you in future to create a subpage like as has been created by one of our administrators here >>> Genesis:Supper's Ready/Annotated. Many thanks! ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 15:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! Been contributing annotations and essays to your site - didn't mean to lurk, just didn't consider registering until your message.

Am so sorry if my work is causing some kind of problem - memory for tiny text files causing page load problems or something? My friends and I have had no problem with this.

I would not mind putting them onto their own page - certainly the "Supper's Ready" annotations were long enough to warrant it. But I must pause here and ask - does this not bury a bit deeper what should shout out to all who look?

In less flowery terms - I had assumed the Wiki part of the Lyric Wiki name meant that this was not just another of the endless repositories of Lyrics scattered over the web, but was a place where people could come to find out information about the lyrics themselves, like the dictionary/encyclopedia that the Wiki title seems to represent. I was hoping this site could be different.

I will, of course, accede to all wishes of the admins - I am not trying to cause undue trouble, but I have actually had official permission from the Legendary Pink Dots to share these annotations/essays, and have studied the English surreal psyche of many progressive/psychedelic bands for well on 23 years now. I am hoping to act as a service to all fans or people who are confused by some obscurities of such lyrics. In a way I am trying to vindicate them by showing people that they are not just psycho-babble nonsense, but sane and thoughtful poetry.

Thanks for letting me post things to Lyric Wiki!

This e-mail was sent by Madprophet to Redxx by the "Email user" function at LyricWiki.

In short, I'm all for adding this information. (Even though the term "Wiki" has nothing to do with encyclopedias. Encyclopediae?) We already add all sorts of metadata to our pages (mostly discography-related), so it would seem to me that anything to do with songs and their lyrics should have its place here. (Unless there is already a wiki or wiki-type site dedicated to interpretations and annotations of lyrics…?) — 6x9(Talk) 22:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for adding additional info like this too. So long as it is the user's original work. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 00:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Would it be better to have a link to the subpage at the top of the song page where it would be more prominent? I almost missed the tiny link at the bottom of Supper's Ready...must get my eyes tested again. Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 01:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Can I suggest a few paragraphs, either the introduction or a summary, are left at the bottom under "Interpretations" with a link through to the full write-up. This way lyric pages are still centred around lyrics but it is made quite obvious that someone has put in the effort to write something about it. (Everything is blue on this site so another blue link sort of gets lost... but a few paras of black text stand out alrigh). ♫LYRIC-Humbugwords♪deeds☘ 05:39, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to sort this move out. I have a couple questions though. First, the [[Bob Marley & The Wailers:Legend: The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers (1984)|Legend]] album was originally released in [[Bob Marley & The Wailers:Legend: The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers (1984)|1984]] with 2 fewer tracks, and the other album page is still up. It seems like the original release year should be the one used with the added tracks included and labeled as such. Also, I saw that you deleted all but one of the songs under the [[Bob Marley & The Wailers#Other Songs|Other Songs]] category, and I didn't know if this was intentional or not. --cgage22 01:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Your welcome. Thanks for bringing this to our attention - it appears that this was moved to Bob Marley in error by someone unfamiliar with Bob's recordings.

Yes you are absolutely right of course with regards to Legend. Considering I have owned the album since the eighties, I should've spotted that one of course, but I must confess it took me so long to sort out (even with my bot's assistance), that I didn't check if there were any other errors on the page. However, I have now corrected this.

With regards to the OS list, yes it was deliberate. I saw you were removing songs from the list that had now been allocated. This helped to remind me that I still needed to correct artist name to "Bob Marley & The Wailers" in all the {{Song}} and {{SongFooter}} templates. After I finished making all the corrections I thought it would be a good idea to remove the OS list to allow this to rebuild with only the songs that have not been allocated/redirected, etc. We will have to check it in a few days to see how the land lies. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 02:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

With regards to Legend again, I see that you corrected the listing on the artist page and fixed the album page. However the 2002 album page still exists and the songs still link there. The songs pages should obviously be fixed, but should we delete or simply redirect the 2002 album page? --cgage22 01:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me. I got distracted, something that happens to me quite often (lol) and I forgot to redirect the 2002 page to 1984. It's done now. And yes, the links on all the song pages now need amending now to the 1984 (correctly named) version. See also how we add additional albums >>> [[Bob Marley & The Wailers:Is This Love]]. Go get some practice in ;) ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 01:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC) P.S. Always redirect over delete.

The OS List won't be rebuilt because the pages have redirects pointing to them. Even if Janitor showed up. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 10:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't get where you're coming from. Janitor won't put redirected songs back in OS list no, but that is the whole point of rebuild. The only pages that should be remaining after a rebuild and which Janitor puts back (when he's around) are those that don't already exist on the artist's page. That is the whole point of rebuild. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 10:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah none of the pages I removed in the OS list are redirected, but some are now allocated to albums. So yes I don't get it. Are you saying that Janitor won't put back any song pages in Bob Marley & The Wailers OS list that were moved there from Bob Marley? ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 11:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What I think Echo meant is that none of the pages will be put back by Janitor, not even those that aren't allocated to any album or listed anywhere on any page, because none of them are orphaned, since each has a redirect link to them. (See also here.) — 6x9(Talk) 14:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Just for illustration what Echo & I were speaking about - take a look what a list was extracted by lwt from Nick 'cave in Oblivion'. Orphaned pages didn't contain none of these songs... cheers,--Senvaikis (talk) 20:43, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I have e-mailed Sean directly about this situation and to see if there is an "Orphaned" definition fix that can be done. Kiefer talk contribs admin 01:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay. In order to help figure out what the problem might be, can anyone give me an example of a song:

That isn't on the Lonelypages list

Only redirected to

Existed in this state the last time that Janitor swept up items onto the Artist's page AND

Wasn't grabbed during that Janitor sweep?

(*WHEW* I hope that made sense.) Because according to Sean, the definition of an orphaned page does include those pages that have only redirects pointing to them. So, the way we think things should work is how things should indeed be working.

I investigated Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds:500 Miles, which is on Senvaikis' Oblivion list on Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, but it was placed on the OS list the last time the Janitor placed items there, but then was later removed for a rebuild and the Janitor hasn't swept any NC&TBS songs up since then, so they apparently weren't really in Oblivion, they just hadn't been swept yet. If anyone can find a good example, then we can perhaps solve this. Otherwise, it just may mean that Janitor needs to be more active! Kiefer talk contribs admin 03:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Tall order Kiefer..I think the only way we are going to know is when Janitor sweeps next.. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 03:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC) P.S. Thanks guys

Normally, if it wasn't for the redirects pointing to the song pages, the Janitor would have re/created the artist page and attached the songs to OS.

Los Rancheros and it's songs never showed up in the lonelypages/orphanedpages to be seen by Janitor. Sean either needs to write a new janitor, or install SMW, see his last post to his talk page. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 04:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I created the page (I won't actually link to them, as I want to make sure that a link from here won't disqualify it - which I don't think it does, as we're in the LyricWiki namespace - but safety first) Absolutely Nothing:This Is Absolutely Nothing to create a normal page and see when it shows up in the Lonelypages list. I also moved a Lonelypage Anime:Ghost In The Shell: SAC 2nd gig to Anime:Ghost In The Shell: SAC 2nd Gig so that I could experiment if moving a page blocks it from the Lonelypages list. I also created the page Absolutely Nothing and moved it to Absolutely Nothing! to see essentially the same thing. We'll have to wait until things are updated to see what happens. When Anime:Ghost In The Shell: SAC 2nd gig disappears (it was #70 on the list), then hopefully we'll have some better answers. Or more questions. One or the other. :-] Kiefer talk contribs admin 00:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

In other words, this test just confirmed what we knew all along (at least as far back as last July). So, unless the MW code itself can be modified, the method Echo and Senv came up with seems to be our best bet. Any chance this job can be botified and run for every artist? — 6x9(Talk) 18:29, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Here's the news after Sean has looked into the various examples: It turns out that pages that are only redirected to aren't ruled out, the code was only ensuring that redirect pages aren't considered Lonely. So, I sent Sean an idea how the Lonelypage checking could possibly be improved. As I have not been a programmer in years upon years, and I don't know the MediaWiki programming, I don't know if my thoughts are of any value, though. So....

After talking to some on the #mediawiki IRC channel, the point was brought up that a possible problem with just ruling out a page that is only redirected to is that it is possible that there is a page that has an incorrectly formatted link that points to the redirect, which then points to the actual existing page. So, for example, if an Artist page was "blue-linked" to a redirect page, which then pointed to the actual page, it really shouldn't be considered Lonely. It would be good to correct the linkage, however.

Which brings up the following idea from Sean: make it so that redirects don't eliminate a page from being Lonely. (This time for real.) Then add a page which contains a list of pages that link to redirects. Then use this info to correct these pages so that they all go directly to the end page with a bot. (Although, I'm sort of wondering if this second part shouldn't be done before the Lonelypages definition is changed anyhow, and if it shouldn't be done no matter what the solution to this problem is, just to get those links correct. But I digress.)

I always thought a way to list pages linking to redirects would be kinda neat, but since it seemed a minor cosmetic thing rather than a pressing problem, I never brought it up… So yeah, I'm all for it. (Though I think some users occasionally link to a redirect on purpose, e.g. to display a "prettified" album link in the Song template…) — 6x9(Talk) 00:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

If you two think it's correct usage this time 6 ;) a good idea, it must be. So yes, gets my vote. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 11:57, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Lame is the system discussed in it, not the thread, - so the best way to close it would be correcting the system ;). Latest news from Oblivion: four songs of The Doobie Brothers are still there since 2008 October...--Senvaikis (talk) 07:58, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Btw, now I can testify that Kiefer was wise not making links in this namespace while experimenting with Oblivion. I found 3 songs of Iron Maiden in Oblivion, "shielded" by links from User:Holek page.--Senvaikis (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Consider this, that happens every day: A new song is submitted with wrong name, but the song is one lw did not have. ficticious example "The Iron Maiden:Cyclone", when moving the song page to "Iron Maiden:Cyclone", with "leave a redirect behind" checked, the song goes to oblivion, same as songs linked to on talk pages.

The lonelypages definition (for artist OS lists) should be: songs/albums in the artist namespace that are not linked on artist page. Is SMW the only solution? (and once the artist/album track list duplication is resolved, that definition will have to change again) ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 00:32, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

How long would it take a script to go through ALL pages in the main namespace and find those which have no links (other than redirects) to them, or only links from other mainspaces? Because it's starting to look like this might be the only surefire way to rescue all semi-lonely pages from Oblivion (especially since redirects aren't the only problem). And it would have to be run regularly. — 6x9(Talk) 01:13, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned above^ the page Los Rancheros with 12 songs in it's namespace is still not created by Janitor, or have the song pages attached (because there are song redirects pointing to them) Janitor's last run was yesterday March 20 (up to letter M), and should be back today to finish the run. I deleted one of those redirects Rancheros, Los:Mujer, so "Los Rancheros:Mujer" now shows up in lonelypages and Janitor will create the artist page and attach Mujer to it. But the rest of the songs will remain in oblivion. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 09:05, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Er, no, that wasn't supposed to happen. Should be fixed now (or as soon as the categories are up-to-date). For some reason, the simplified #if doesn't seem to work for category sortnames… — 6x9(Talk) 19:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I kept getting server errors (500) a few hours ago, but after the 2nd or 3rd retry it usually worked… Now I keep getting "newNullResponse" too. — 6x9(Talk) 04:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, same error here, I get the hit list, but when I click the artist's arrow it returns NullError. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 04:59, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

(Outdenting) The most paradoxical thing in this situation is the fact that my LwTools, using httpRequests to iTunes, still works, returning correct iTuneIDs. But both FF & IE browsers - fail to work...--Senvaikis (talk) 06:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Mmmm? lol, Red must be busy cleaning up the burecratic mess she helped conceive Category:Invalid ArtistFooter Parameter, she prolly remembers this one too: Category wikipedia link in album footer, Of course she did great service cleaning up the UK/England mess as well. mmmm we need a parent category for all this (current and upcoming) Redundancy, or maybe we should just ship them all to Gibraltar as soon as it's redeclared a country?

How about before any admin/bureaucrat starts throwing random data into pages or under multiple labels, we get it approved?

That category was entirely my idea/fault – I guess "obsolete" would have been better than "invalid", but it still beats Category:OOPS :-) It's just that a lot of parameters are no longer supported/used by ArtistFooter (moved to/fetched from ArtistHeader, moved to Labels/Genres, never there in the first place – like language), so I threw them all into this category. Once S2E2 is better, I'll give you a detailed list :-) Hmmm, Category:Hometown/Gibraltar is still a Red link…

I toyed with the idea, when working on {{Album}}, of adding a catch-all badge parameter, which would display any badges below the infobox, but since Wikipedia was added directly as a parameter, and AOTW looked better inside the infobox too, I decided to leave it out… Personally I think a text-only solution without any badge is the best option. — 6x9(Talk) 21:47, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

@6x9: I tried looking at Echo's post upside down, then I tried reading it from right to left but it still made absolutely no sense so I'm grateful to you for clearing that one up. Thanks.

@Echo: So now 6x9 has informed you that I had nothing to do with creating what you deem to be a 'burecratic mess', i.e. Category:Invalid ArtistFooter ParameterCategory:Invalid ArtistFooter Parameter, (which incidentally I think is a good idea), perhaps you could enlighten me as to what "burecratic mess" you also want to believe I "helped conceive" when you refer to 'Category wikipedia link in album footer'? And what do you mean by 'approved'? And 'it belongs in a template'?

Because to be honest, you may understand what you write, but I have difficulty understanding what you are going on about much of the time. I posted a few thoughts here in CP in order that these could be discussed. Please explain. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 23:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I was actually just thinking of doing that soon. I can probably have it up by the end of the day. --WillMak050389 16:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, the list is up, there are a bunch of links that need mending because of incorrect format or non-official names, but it's a start (or redirects need to be made). I might get some more done tonight, not sure yet (I've got a lot of homework that I've been procrastinating for...) --WillMak050389 23:06, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

PS: Oh yeah, then there are the album pages that aren't created yet...

Or those that exist, but for some reason as song page… — 6x9(Talk) 23:23, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Excellent stuff Will, thanks for doing that! And no worries about missing stuff, links, etc. it's a great start!

Hi! I think it must be a good idea to translate some songs in other languages. I participate in the project Ido and I'd like to see my favorites songs in Ido, English and became accessible to all. Cecile.nicola 10:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Cecile.nicola:

I'm sure it would be just fine if you'd like to translate songs into Ido. I'm not sure if you meant adding a translation on the same song page or making a separate Ido version. Once you start, you will need to identify it by putting Ido or English-Ido in the language spot in the footer below the lyrics section. This way our admins will be more able to categorize it within the languages we have available. Thanks and happy editing! RainbowDragon talk contribs 13:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I have a feeling that this is not right answer. When we put in an English translation we still leave the language tag with the original language and we never add "English" because of the translation. The same should be true for Ido or any other translations.—gniw 20:51, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

LoL it seem to be complicated. In french, we say: "A good example is rather than a long discourse" ("Un bon exemple vaut mieux qu'un long discours" in french.) If you have no objection, I'll try to put my translation in one song and -when is done, not yet- I notify you. It's ok? Cecile.nicola 08:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

We are not Musicbrainz. Our aim is not to present complete discographies. Therefore it's unnecessary for us to add a bootleg (or, in the case of King Crimson, a 4-CD live set) just to allocate a single song. — 6x9(Talk) 00:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

"Our aim is not to present complete discographies." I'm not agreeing with this. Our aim should be to present complete discographies of official releases (at least). Well, at least in the case of Floyd we have the complete discography of official releases (as soon as the singles are done). I also have to agree with Redxx on the non-album tracks thing: non-album tracks are those that weren't ever officially released, like "Raving and Drooling" but not "Embryo." --WillMak050389 02:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Problem is, not all artists show as much restraint as Pink Floyd. Some have many, many, many best-of-type compilations. (Alan Parsons Project comes to mind here – more compilations than regular albums.) Some have many, many, many live releases. (King Crimson is a very good example – even if you don't count mail-order-only and download-only releases, and the latter are official as well.) Regular albums, yes. Major live releases and compilations, yes. You could even make a case for "the major the band, the minor the release" (meaning we might allow for more obscure Pink Floyd compilations).

But we're still a lyrics site, and anything not directly concerning lyrics should be kept to a minimum – especially if that information is already easily available elsewhere, and we're already linking to that elsewhere anyway (i.e. Wikipedia, Musicbrainz, Discogs, Allmusic, various specialised sites like ProgArchives and MetalArchives…). Our ultimate goal is to have lyrics for just about every song ever recorded, and to present those lyrics in a way a user might easily find them. Listing songs, even (officially) unreleased ones, on artists' pages, helps users find them. Adding well-known compilations and live albums helps as well. Adding an obscure compilation that was released back in 1970 on vinyl only and never re-pressed doesn't really help, because anyone owning that compilation and still listening to it (otherwise he wouldn't look the lyrics up) in all likelihood also owns the regular albums, and that's where he'd look for lyrics first anyway.

Sorry for the essay…

PS. Maybe we should bring this issue up on the comm. portal, since it's really a question about site policy… — 6x9(Talk) 03:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

We could, but so far as I am aware it is policy. It is also touched upon in Help pages and I know Kiefer thinks the same too. We have put users right on this before. Senv in fact.

We are a lyrics site. Discographies is not what we are about. This is best left to the sites we link to like allmusic, etc. I am not even so generous in my thinking as to want to include live albums (unless we actually have the live lyrics) and compilations. For in the main this is just duplicating info for info's sake. If all the songs appearing on a compilation album are already listed on the artist page under a studio release, then to add that compilation seems to me somewhat pointless. All roads (song links) only lead to the one song page after all. Another reason not to list all these types of albums is that it over inflates the artist's page. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 03:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't be sorry for the essay 6×9, I enjoy your complete thoughts. Unfortunately, I am in disagreement with them, but that doesn't necessarily imply that I have a problem with you 6×9 (don't get that impression). My fundamental problem with this site is that we don't have a lot of information. I realize that we are LyricWiki, so our main focus should be on the lyrics, but with the power that we have, being a wiki, we should strive to give every piece of true information that we can concerning music (I guess I want us more to be a music site than just a lyrics site (If you look at the majority of my non-minor edits, excluding recent Pink Floyd stuff (I just wanna get them to Gold), they are almost all concerning album or artist pages)). What sets us apart from other music sites, though, is the lyrics, which I also enjoy us having. I love the fact that MusicBrainz has detailed info about every song (length, cover versions, samples are used in, etc. etc.) and I love RateYourMusic (I can't plug them enough) because they have accurate listings for every release (and every different issue of every release), plus they have information pages on not just artists and their releases, but labels, venues, genres, and other stuff I can't think of off the top of my head. But we here at LW have the power to have all that information along with the lyrics because we have a wiki. We can include all the information we can find.

Anyway, that was a long diatribe as to explain why I'd like full discographies and my own problem with our purpose as a site (see it's a "me problem" not a "you problem") It's not you, it's me. I think George Costanza invented that one. Now I'm the one that has to apologize for the essay...--WillMak050389 03:37, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

As for taking it to CP, I'd be up for it.

That's OK, I can deal with differing opinions. Sometimes even without bloodshed :-) A wider discussion might be beneficial anyway, you never know what good ideas might come up. And if a majority of users agrees with Will, I don't think we should stand in their way. Those policies aren't etched in stone and held up by Kiefer-dressed-as-Charlton-Heston, you know. At least I don't think they are… Who knows what Kiefer does in his spare time though… — 6x9(Talk) 04:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

This is the kind of disagreement I like ;) I enjoyed reading your post Will. Yes I think that it would be good to continue this part of the discussion in CP, since this has now become a more general issue than what we started off talking about (being the layout of the Pink Floyd page)...So... ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 09:04, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thou shalt not overwhelm the page with stuff that not even the band members know exist. So sayeth the Kiefer. And he saw a discography that included all major releases, including those of the studio and those of the live performance and those of the compilation and he was well pleased. Those that were of smaller press and singles were relegated to the Land beyond the gate known as Lynk-ohnlee. Those that had the Mark of the Bootleg were not allowed to enter except by the Grace of the Admins. And so it was written, and so it was. And Kiefer saw this and said that it was good. Kiefer talk contribs admin 22:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Being not Anglo-Saxon I may feign uncomprehending that K's opinion should be treated more like 11'th Commandment from upgraded Decalogue, - not an opinion ;). Furthermore, I'm free-minded, so I beg to differ. Yes, LW isn't a discography. It's a "Lyrics-graphy". And imo that's essential and sufficient condition to include information about any release, if that's the only one way to provide information about some song with lyrics, not included in studio albums. --Senvaikis (talk) 08:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Rflmao@Kiefer..very good.

...that's essential and sufficient condition to include information about any release, if that's the only one way to provide information about some song with lyrics, not included in studio albums. . Yes, that is certainly my approach. We are a lyrics site. And I say again, all roads lead to one. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 14:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, our number one priority is to have the lyrics. We don't claim or need to have a complete discography. Having all major releases is a goal, but as I always say, having every small press compilation or bootleg is actually discouraged. Now, having said that...if someone has already created the album page, then I'm not really for deleting it. It can be given a link to the page on the Artist page under the appropriate header "Bootlegs" or "Small Press Compilations", but without a track list. No sense in destroying information from the site database if it is good and accurate. As has been mentioned, if there is a valid reason to include the page (say for instance, that a band has a famous/infamous bootleg, or a rare, unreleased song was included as a bonus on a small press compilation) then creating the album page is certainly a good option to remove the song from the Other Songs list. Kiefer talk contribs admin 19:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Nobody addressed the issue of revenue that album pages may bring, at any rate, why not comment on the album listing of Helloween∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 14:56, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Helloween has been updated to match what's been said here. Please don't add notes to a page that are likely to frustrate and confuse an editor who is trying to fix a page. It's bad etiquette. Either fix the page or leave a kind message on the editor's talk page. Direct them to this discussion, even. Don't vandalize a page to make a point, though. Kiefer talk contribs admin 01:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you find it difficult to grasp a diff when the page is too long? (your not alone) Which part of my edit did you label as vandalism that you removed? the 7Kb of track listing which you removed under the edit summary of "CAPS as per LWPN" (very informative to the other guy) was somebody else's edition, after I converted level 3 headings to level 2 headings that you retained. I apologize for correcting your error. No sweat. Thanks ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 06:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you made the level 3 headings into level 2, but didn't continue the work and put the page into chronological order. You added the following comments (that were visible to the page): "Live albums (may be removed unless they contain tracks unavailable on studio albums)" and "Compilations etc. (may be removed unless they contain tracks unavailable on studio albums)." These are not supposed to be on an Artist page. You know this. You have a problem with an editor, then discuss it with the editor. If there is a common incorrect edit (a title that is meant to be misspelled, but that keeps getting "corrected") then add a hidden editor's note by the item in question explaining why that item should not be "corrected". Putting such notes to an editor on the page in a visible manner is a bit rude. An editor who doesn't know what's going on is likely to see those notes as an attack on them and quit editing. I'm guessing that the edit was in response to this discussion, but most editors aren't going to know that. Those are the edits that I'd consider vandalism. You put them there to make a point. That's not the way to do it.

I, on the other hand, updated the formatting to match what we've been discussing. I figured why discuss what is wrong with the page when it can just be updated and become an example of how it should be done. That's why, along with my note about "caps as per LW:PN", I also entered "updated formatting", which you conveniently gloss over, is more informative about what I did. As much of what I did had to do with formatting, I placed it first. I don't always put the major item changed first, but I try to. I added "etc." to show that other items were also changed. Usually these items are minor, or the list of changes is so long that to enumerate them all would be burdensome. At least my edit summary gave some sort of clue as to what happened.

As for the "7Kb of track listing" that I removed, that was "somebody else's edition (sic), after I converted level 3 headings to level 2 headings that you retained." Two things are incorrect with that statement. First, those tracklistings were there before your edits. So, I didn't think that you were at fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was good info, it just didn't need to be on the Artist page. Links to singles should exist, but not track lists. Most editors aren't likely to know that. No biggie. It got changed. Second, as far as I can tell from the page's history, I have never edited that page before, so I have never retained those level 3 headings. When I see level 3s in such a fashion I change them, as I've never supported having a separate section for compilations or live albums.

There are plenty of interesting and informative 'reasons for nominating' Album Of The Week such as this one or this one (and many more)which get consigned to history. In the main, people invest a good portion of time and effort in nominating an album and I was wondering if the reason for the nomination would reach a wider audience if it was placed on the talk page of the relevant album. Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 00:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't want you to feel your post has been ignored, so I'm going to reply with a question to help me clarify what you're proposing. You are wondering if we can copy the reason for nomination for AotW to the talk page of an album when it receives AotW? If so, I think that is good idea. Though the discussion pages are meant for discussion on editing the page itself (or to provide information specific to the LyricWiki project), a lot of people also put discussion on the artist/album/song on there. I think this would also, as you said, allow people to more easily find what people have written about the album for it to have been AotW. I also think we could copy over the discussion from the "discuss this week's album" pages (such as this page). As the admin who takes care of AotW, I could include this when I update the AotW, so it's no problem for me to do it if the general consensus is to do so. --WillMak050389 23:29, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Will, if you do, make sure to use a consistent heading on the talk pages, so that the section can be linked to from the AOTW badge on the album page. — 6x9(Talk) 01:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. In answer to your question..yes. I appreciate the {{AOTW}} badge that is on successful AOTW album pages links to the Album Of The Week page and from there, armed with the AOTW date, it's possible to locate the reason for the nomination. However, I feel these interesting and often review-like nominations would be appreciated on the album talk page or with a direct link from the album page to the nomination reason. Perhaps they could be in collapsible form on the talk page? Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 01:10, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant idea notime. Let's be honest, the talk pages of songs and albums are not used as much as they could be, so there's plenty of room beyond the page ranking templates for other stuff. It would add interest to the page, and might also encourage interesting discussion between fans. Further information may be gleaned from such discussions too. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 05:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Will & 6, I was thinking something along these lines. Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 08:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Not sure… Having it as regular text beneath a regular wiki header might be more inviting to discussion than a template… — 6x9(Talk) 15:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, putting my great 'collapsible' idea to one side for the moment, what about a separate tab for album notes. nominations, reviews? Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 17:50, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Me three. You could maybe put the original AOTW badge on the talk page too, so it won't feel neglected… — 6x9(Talk) 14:40, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

All done (see talk page). All that needs to be edited is a link in the AotW on the album page (I assume the next pass through of the {{Album}} template?) Hope you approve. I'm going to bed now. Please leave your complaints here, for the morning. --WillMak050389 06:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll take the compliment, though I am a guy. lol, not a bad song, it's just sooooo easy to make fun of, but I do appreciate the praise. Other than that, I'm glad to see that it has met the approval of someone. --WillMak050389 17:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Since you did exactly what I suggested above at least someone here can follow orders ;-) I didn't think you'd need my approval, but before you have to embarrass yourself any further by fishing for compliments… Looks good. :-) — 6x9(Talk) 18:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, excellent! Thanks for taking my idea on board.This topic can be archived now I reckon. Ñô†īṃέ2çяȳTalk 18:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I noticed something abnormal during S2E2's recent "cleanup" of one of my watched pages: It seems that it is converting all _ characters into spaces, even for things that this should not be done, like officialSite. See this revision for an example.

I think this need to be fixed (or at least stopped) before it does too much damage.—gniw 02:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

But the problem still remains. If S2E2 is removing underscores, any website with an underscore will be broken. Also, any magic words that use the double underscore will also be broken (i.e. __NOTOC__). I can't find any examples, but we don't want these things to be broken if they are on an artist's page. --WillMak050389 04:42, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

You must not have noticed the __NOTOC__ examples that S2E2 did fix. Try looking in the song pages (mostly east Asian) that use it. On the artist pages, 99% of "_"s are in album art. hth ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 04:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, last time I checked the link was still valid. I'm sure archive.org can prove me right, if not now then 5 months later =P—gniw 05:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Good, cool, glad we could resolve the URL issue. Another question, and I hope I'm not hitting a sore spot here, but can we avoid edits that only add/subtract spaces around the equals sign in templates? It's just that these edits don't really change anything on the page and they clutter up my watchlist (and others' I assume) and the recent edits log. Plus, I like the equals to line up, it makes editing the parameters in the templates easier. --WillMak050389 05:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

No Will, it's not a sore spot. I go over all of those pages manually as well (currently all the CJK artists needing romanizedArtist, AF clean up, genre, sort field, wiki link etc.) It's all my edits but in two parts, One part is the mind numbing bot job (underscores, boilerplate texts), and part 2 is what the bot can't do because each page is a special case, like romArtist, figuring which wiki link is to stay, adding mb, etc. Does that make sense? cheers ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 05:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

..can we avoid edits that only add/subtract spaces around the equals sign in templates? It's just that these edits don't really change anything on the page and they clutter up my watchlist. Yes, I'd appreciate that too. Since it makes no difference to layout on the page, it does seem a little pointless. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 06:41, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Any more pointless than "Various Artists" vs. "various artists" ?, or this edition [2] (is that the Gold Standard?) or duplicating params in artist pages? or uncategorized data thrown without a template into pages, then the folks who did it posting requests so somebody else is asked to clean it up? Are you judging sigs or actions? oh well ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 06:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Whatever I do I do for a reason. A reason I don't always but can usually explain, if asked. Of all the examples given above only one is referring to my actions. This being being "Various Artists" vs. "various artists". So since I've seen you mention this before, I will now explain this to you. Firstly, like you, I have always put "Various Artists" in the artist's parameter of album pages. Then someone came along one day and corrected this part of my edit to the help page. In the edit summary were the words "changed "Varios Artists" to "various artists" because it's used in a sentence." see here And you know what? Asides from the fact that I didn't actually spell Various "Varios" ;), Humbug was right. Like you, I had just never thought about it since album template was updated.

From that point on, if I edit an album page and it has "Various Artists" in the artist parameter, I change it. But this is the best bit. The one thing you'll never catch me doing is editing a page just to change that. Because whilst this would of course not be "pointless" , I don't personally consider such an edit worth cluttering up Will's and everyone else's watchlists. Nor do I consider it justifies burdening the job queue.

As for your final comment, as everyone here knows I don't judge on the basis of who does what edits. Or on who has an idea. Or agree with people because I like them. If it's good, it's good. If I disagree, I disagree. Just seems you disagree with me more than most. Oh well... ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 09:46, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a great idea to have a discussion about editing standards that can be applied to everybody regardless of how they access lw or what 'rank' they have. So let's set standards and stick with them. It's not as interesting to cleaning up your duplication in artist pages, as it is to cap or uncap VA, vA va? How about some editing standards? If there are editions worthy of reverting, it is song pages with non lyrics thrown in the lyrics and duplication of data in pages. nobody's good intentions are in dispute ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 10:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC) PS: another Gold example:[3] currently relegated to a subpage, clean version accessible via api

Sorry Echo, but this is another post I don't understand. Would you also explain It's not as interesting to cleaning up your duplication in artist pages? Is this yet another thing you want to believe I do? If so can you please provide some example of this. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 11:23, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Your previous Gold example was Will's. The other is mine. I can't speak for Will, but what makes you think that The Highwayman song does not meet the criteria for Gold? In any event, I thought you was going to provide me with an example of me "duplicating in artist pages"... ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 13:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I don’t understand the discussion either. I thought the second example is pretty straightforward (standard says don't clutter up the lyrics with markup; I thought the only markup allowed was bold, to mark which part was spoken or sung by which artist). As for the first example, I echo Red's comment that the edit was not hers.—gniw 13:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

The "Gold" standard applies to the items in the Page Ranking templates, not to the inclusion or lack of inclusion to links/etc. within the lyrics tags. The songs are still Gold, but he was objecting to the in-lyric links. (Which in Will's example seems a bit overhanded for the situation, but which does give valuable information about the song in Redxx's edit. A workable solution still needs to be found that compromises between mucking up the API display and web-usefulness.) But this is a whole other subject, really unrelated to the topic. Bringing this up is a way to deflect attention away from the unnecessary and generally damaging edits that the bot made. Kiefer talk contribs admin 18:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent):I was pointing out the absence of a clear editing standard, params, stacking order, spacing, non lyrics in lyric box, everything that goes into pages.

As for keifer's damaging edits for removal of unserscore, the same happened when Aqua was removing underscores from songs pages, and in the process some youTube links got broken... There was one complaint about it, as in this case!

As for param duplication in artist pages, see all the pages with wikipedia link in header + footer. The current solution that requires no editing & no duplication is the Go To Top of page", but the duplicated params in artist pages are waiting (thank you all who backed up the idea of dupe param removal)

If a gold song is known to break the api, and the majority of our users, is it still worthy of Gold standard?

Again this is about lack of standards for editing, not about red or will's edits, messing the api (well intentioned as it is) is a PITA for 1000's of users everyday who access lw thru the api. The current solution (not an edict) is to put pages with links in them in the Category:Song Subpages clear of the api, but available by web. If every line of the lyrics needs to be annotated, why not just slap the official lyrics or lyrics as sung on the page and be done with? And if linking in lyrics adds valuable info then put it in the documentation and tell the api users to chill. cheers ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 10:27, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

These are good topics for discussion, definitely true. Some we've already discussed in the past, but perhaps not to a "final" decision. Partly because there isn't a clear cut answer to them, perhaps, such as with the API vs. Web display, which requires an uneasy middle ground. But they are a digression from the topic. All that needed to be said is that the bot wouldn't continue to mess with the spacing around equals signs in template parameters until the situation was discussed. Which, and I honestly do hate to harp on it, could have been done if you started the discussion about your proposed changes here first instead of just going at things with the bot. So, since the discussion about the bot's edits seems to have run its course, let's talk about these items down below under their own headers. Kiefer talk contribs admin 15:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Songs by the same artist with the same title but in different languagesEdit

While I was browsing SNLI for stuff to fix I noticed that BoA has some songs that has the same title but versions in different languages (e.g., BoA:Sara has a Korean version and an English version, and then BoA:Sara/cn is apparently a third version in Chinese). How should we tag the language in SongFooter? Or should we split these pages? Or maybe some other way?—gniw 03:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

If the song was released individually for each language then each language lyrics gets it's own page. If the song was only recorded in one language and other versions are only translations/romanizations, then the original lyrics and the translation/romanization will go into one page, using the translation template, and the original lyric language would be indicated in SongFooter. That's how the majority of the multi language songs are done, from what I've seen. Of course someone else might pipe in with an exception ;) hth ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 06:05, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

How should the split pages be named though? I'm not (yet?) a BoA fan so I'm not sure about these ones, but Google would have me believe that these are real, individually-released songs. Perhaps some sort of note in parentheses? But I don't think this is covered in the page naming standards. =)—gniw 06:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The page would get the title of the official release, in whatever language that it is (don't use romanized or translated name though) and if the release was titled in English, then Caps as per LW:PN. Use musicbrainz link in SongFooter to look up the actual song title. does that help? ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 06:41, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really… Until some BoA fan can enlighten us, or until I buy some of BoA's CD's to check it out (the official sites don't seem to be helpful), it seems that all these different versions have exactly the same title (in English…). I don't think I'll do anything to these pages, since I really am not sure, but I guess there probably should be a policy in place in case this really turns out to be the case.—gniw 07:05, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. ID; PEACE B… So assuming that ENG albums are in English and KOR albums are in Korean, the two versions do seem to have the same title except for a difference in capitalization. I suppose I'll need to buy a couple of CD's (or at least go for a trip to the record store) to sort this out.

Might be too much work for a non-fan =/ —gniw 07:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Everyone seems to favor something different, I prefer the first option, it's sorted nicely and you still can find song xyz if it was released on a single only without checking every single(Album) page. --MetalSnake

Help:Contents/Editing/Formatting/Artists#Album_List is the current standard. Information about how to handle small press compilations and singles isn't on there, but once the discussion above has settled, it will likely be added. Consensus has been (and appears to still be) that singles should be listed on the page under a header below the album listings (as shown on the second link you gave) but only as a link to the album page, without including track lists. A couple of pages I've seen have the singles listed under the appropriate album that they originated on. As they don't have the track lists included, they are appropriate as well. The problem with including track lists for singles on the Artist page is that it beefs things up memory wise. For most users, this isn't likely a problem, but for some it might be, and so we try to keep things from getting too lengthy. On the Helloween page, for instance, there are 13 main album releases, but 26 singles. Since most of those songs are accessible already from the main album listings, there isn't as immediate a reason to include links to them in the form of a Single track list on the Artist page. For those who do want that information, it is still available by clicking on the link to the single's album page. If there were songs that were only available on Single releases that just had to be available on the Artist page, I suppose that a "B-Sides" list could also be created above the "Other Songs" list, of those exceptions. I've seen that too, but usually that list is on a page where album pages for Single releases hasn't been created as a way to remove them from the No-Man's-Land of the Other Songs list. Kiefer talk contribs admin 20:52, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I missed that part about no track listings for singles too. I guess that part is hard to read =P

So I have to revert some of my own edits… Grr…—gniw 14:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but it doesn't say what should be done with them. Only what shouldn't. So...it still needs updating. :-] Kiefer talk contribs admin 18:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Is OK Kiefer, I've rang the optician and told him you needed an urgent appointment: Links should be provided on the artist page to any album pages detailing singles.:P ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 13:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK (I didn't put it there…) it referred to the artist parameter in the {{Artist}} (now -Footer) template, which means it now refers to the artist parameter in {{ArtistHeader}}. So it would be "not applicable" for most pages. — 6x9(Talk) 15:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Right answer ;).

In view of this, can we update the template to reflect this and avoid any confusion about why it's there? There may be some further updates needed on these info templates to reflect all the changes that have taken place, which perhaps we could continue to discuss here. This is just the only one I've thought about so far. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 07:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

How about we remove this parameter, since it's mostly a cosmetic thing anyway? If we do leave it, it's the documentation that wants updating, not the template.

As for the new parameters… I have a few ideas about automating most of it, but they'll have to wait until we get the String and/or RegEx extension. — 6x9(Talk) 18:12, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Okey Dokey. I look forward to hearing about your ideas. And yes I think the parameter is unnecessary to be on ArtistInfo now, particularly since it is automatically completed when page is created. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 13:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It would be very nice if the bottom of each song page would contain a Succession box for each album it appears on, linking it to the next and previous song on that album. This would enable readers to easily navigate to the next song when they are viewing the lyrics of the song they are currently listening to. If necessary, they could be collapsed by default in order not to enlarge the page too much. These boxes could be generated automatically from album pages. What do others think of this idea? 85.146.241.224 18:43, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Waaayyy too much redundancy. Artist, current, prevname and nextname parameters should all be optional. And a 3-column table would look better, I think.

Unfortunately it can't be automatically generated. Not until we get… You all know the rest :-) A bot could go through all album pages and slap it on, though. But we'd need to restrict this to studio albums; I shudder to think what a certain horse with no name might end up like. — 6x9(Talk) 19:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Static variables from hell... double Yikes! If this is not done dynamically/automagically, it ends up being worse than the album and artist page param duplication, with the added bonus that +600,000 pages will possibly be affected! Good intentions need be followed with Twice as much Magic. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 20:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Because not everyone uses the web interface, and to the API, transcluded song lists are invisible. Here is a more recent discussion about this topic. — 6x9(Talk) 20:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Time for me to join the API team then, and fix this major shortcoming :) 85.146.241.224 21:19, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

If you do, don't be surprised if many people here will declare their undying love for you. — 6x9(Talk) 17:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I would have reservations about putting this on every song page. In whatever form. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 21:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Then what would make a song page qualified to have it? (Other than the album page actually existing of course.) If we allow it for any, we'll have to allow it for all. — 6x9(Talk) 21:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Why exactly? Assuming it's technically feasible (a big if, given the comments above), if the set of navigation boxes is collapsed (as a whole) by default, it would be useful for those who want it, without being obtrusive to others. 85.146.241.224 23:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't mean you shouldn't use it, of course – just that we won't have a bot put it on every song page any time soon. — 6x9(Talk) 00:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I also have reservations about the idea. I know that some pages have such a thing, but I would hate to see such a thing on all pages as well. This would have to be something that was done "by hand" and not by bot, and yes, certain songs would require multiple (multiple-multiple) succession boxes. (If you do one album, you'd better do them all.) It just seems like a whole lot of work that will likely never get completed and it really only saves a single click. Ideally, one should be able to click on the album link on a song page, and then click on the next song in line. Not that big of a challenge compared to dropping succession boxes on all of the song pages.

I understand the charm of the concept, though. Listen to an album, go from page to page in a single click. Yeah, sounds good. I probably wouldn't remove (haven't removed) such things from pages if an editor did the work, but I don't think it should be an encouraged practice and definitely shouldn't be standard for a lyric page. Just from the cost/benefit ratio of work made vs. work saved. Kiefer talk contribs admin 00:58, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

All the reservations above seem to be based on the idea that significant handwork would be involved. Let me clarify my position: I consider this a good idea only if it can be done automatically in some way. (Which I think is quite possible, but that's a different matter.) 85.146.241.224 20:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

While the template could be added automatically, its maintenance would still have to be done by hand. I doubt full automation will be possible without Semantic. — 6x9(Talk) 20:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Why? If you can add them, you can also remove all the current succession boxes and add them from scratch again. Voila, easy automatic maintenance. 85.146.241.224 21:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Easy, maybe, but unless we find a sure-fire way of detecting which ones need updating, you'd probably need a bot dedicated to this task alone, day and night, and that's really too high a cost. — 6x9(Talk) 17:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I still think it's quite possible without that high a cost. However, I'll delay proving it to you until I fixed the API ;) 85.146.241.224 23:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) This function is already available in itunes+ various widgets, like so: If you have your lyric widget displayed, it updates automatically with the lyrics of the playing track and you can go next/prev album/track. However the tight integration btwn iTunes + widgets is not available here, The main reason is we have two track list sources at lw, the album page and the artist page. Once that redundancy is resolved, we can get to the guts of implementation. And imho the only viable method would be one that requires no page editing whatsoever, all the params would be fetched serverside and displayed on album/song pages, just like our current 'return to top of page' link on artist pages. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 07:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC) nice to have, but expensive

BTW, the top-of-page link in ArtistFooter is simply this: [[{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}#top|(return to top of page)]] – no magic, no complicated code, hardly any additional expenses. — 6x9(Talk) 23:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if there a consensus or some sort of de-facto standard on how national anthems should be named here. There are a couple that I noticed need merging, but I don’t know where I should merge them to. Thanks!—gniw 03:24, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if this could be found (or created?) but I think a blank flag with a musical note superimposed on it would look nice.

Also, let's not forget gniw's question above. Is there a standard in naming national anthems or do they just go by actual title and author (if known)? Are they in any special category or are they scattered willy-nilly across lyricwiki? -- RainbowDragon talk contribs 17:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

@Times I am very bad at finding icons ;) the only thing that came to mind was a bugle & a scroll! Maybe a choir?

Gniw's idea made me think we need a national anthem template or an artist switch for SongHeader. "This song is performed by ::::The National Anthem of Country"...?

how about: This is the \[\[National Anthem\]\] of \[\[Country\]\]

where \[\[National Anthem\]\] links to the national anthem list, and \[\[Country\]\] to the Country cat page... or make National Anthem static text and just use country param. ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 17:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. And add it to [[Category:National Anthems]] of course. Do we want an artist-type page [[National Anthems]], or a list [[LyricWiki:Lists/National Anthems]]? (The former is probably where people would look first, so at least a redirect should be placed there.) And what about page ranking? — 6x9(Talk) 17:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Not an artist = not an artist page = no Page Rank. Would be nigh on impossible to get Gold anyhow ;) What artist would people be looking under do you think 6? No, I think they will be looking for the name..omn a list type page. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 18:08, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

To quote: "Are you having a dense day today? Brain overload perhaps? In a way so you can understand what I mean? Mmmm...Ok" What about page ranking for the anthems themselves (not the master page they're listed on)? — 6x9(Talk) 18:17, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Might be a tad difficult completing all the necessary parameters don't you think beloved? ;) i.e. what album song appears on, who the artist is, the asin, iTunes link... ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 10:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

So? That means they're "not applicable", doesn't it? That means it can still go Silver (if not Gold, but certifying will admittedly be rather difficult without a time machine), doesn't it? — 6x9(Talk) 14:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) What namespace will the Anthems go to? "National Anthem"? (or whatever else we choose) that would be the default artist, no? do we need to show the artist aka namespace on SongHeader? should we use the current SH/SF? Make a new one to deal with lack of artist for National Anthems? I think ranking can be applied but that seems a few steps later on... ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 14:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I think ranking is meaningful. At the very least, the distinction between Green, Violet (e.g., national anthems not in the native script, wrong accented letters, etc.), and Bronze is meaningful.

I have an additional question about national anthems in multiple languages where each version has its own different title (e.g., Finland). Or historical versions (e.g., the national anthem of Canada in LW is currently a historical, not the current, version). How should the different versions be named in such cases?—gniw 00:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed that the national anthem of Canada has now been replaced with the current version.—gniw 01:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

LyricWiki:Lists/National Anthems is probably the best place, with redirects at "National Anthem" and "...s". Dunno whether we should call the pages "National Anthem:Country" or "National Anthem of Country"… I like Echo's idea of a Song-type template with "This is the National Anthem of Country", with links to the list page and the hometown category (and a ranking star). No SongFooter, though. — 6x9(Talk) 22:46, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Ranking – In terms of existence of lyrics in “the original script”, I think ranking is meaningful. The national anthem of Israel without lyrics in actual Hebrew letters definitely should be purple. If the natonal anthem of Finland had missing/corrupted accented letters it would have to be purple too.

SongFooter – Currently the language tag is in the SongFooter. We might need to take this into consideration (when designing a national anthem–specific template).

Page naming conventions – According to current policy, a song in multiple languages should have the version that is first released as the main article. This puts the Swedish version of the national anthem of Finland as the main article, which seem counterintuitive (e.g., Wikipedia lists the Finnish version as main).

SongFooter, page naming conventions, and TransTitle – If national anthems should be named Country or National Anthem of Country, where should we put their actual titles? Should we use SongFooter (or equivalent) and/or TransTitle for this purpose?

Comments? (I probably have to revert some of these revisions after the discussion ends…)—gniw 01:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Yikes, this is more complicated than I thought… Language (and, if necessary, fLetter) parameter can be added, no problem. Other than categories SongFooter is only used for external links, and most of them won't make sense here.

Since NAs aren't "regular" songs by our definition (i.e. they have no "artist"), I guess the normal policy regarding songs in multiple languages can be bent somewhat. We need a decision on pagenames though. Just the title? "Title (National Anthem of ...)"? "National Anthem(s):Title"? #2 seems a bit excessive… — 6x9(Talk) 02:28, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

That (and {{WP-Song}} of course) should pretty much cover it. Except for the pagename. Since apparently no-one else has any special preferences, I'll just let gniw decide on that :-) — 6x9(Talk) 21:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Is the Recaptcha widget provided as-is or can it be customized? I stared at it and couldn't figure out where the "Ok" or "Submit" button is. Fortunately the Enter key still works.—gniw 15:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

The flash part is as-is. It might be a bit confusing, but I don't think the widget itself is intended to have those buttons... at least in the case I tried (making an anonymous edit with external links), the prompt is just another field & you're supposed to use the normal "Save page" button to save the page.

Although, it's possible I missed something (which we'd have to report back to the reCAPTCHA people) and there is some form somewhere that it is used for without any normal submit buttons.

I just did my first Song Info Template here http://lyricwiki.org/Talk:Qntal:Un_Vers_De_Dreyt_Nien and was wondering why there is no field for the translation. Is there any reason to not add that into the Song Info box? Another thing is, there is no official video to that song so it's no possible to get a done in the youtube field? And what about fan made videos if there is no official one, should those be used? --MetalSnake 15:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

An optional translation parameter could be added; let's wait what others think. The main reason for having YouTube links is to allow listening to the song; so whether the video is official or fan-made isn't too important (though the former is preferred). If no video exists at all, you put "not applicable" in that field. — 6x9(Talk) 16:24, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea as long as it's an optional parameter. I find a translated page to be more important to me than timed lyrics and they have an optional parameter already. -- RainbowDragon talk contribs 16:34, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Hardly needs saying, but it's a good idea to watch the video right the way through that you are linking the song to, especially fan made videos, as some can be a bit well "unsavoury" and we don't want to inadvertently cause offence. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 17:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless you mean for existing song pages with nothing (visible, at least) between the lyric tags. Didn't there use to be a category for this? Wasn't it then decided that they should simply be deleted instead? — 6x9(Talk) 13:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I have seen bizarre cases where lyrics are hidden inside HTML comments, and cases where lyrics used to exist but subsequently deleted by the original contributor. Sometimes I know what to do, but other times I know too little about these songs to figure out what to do with them.—gniw 13:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

What I mean is song pages that have no lyrics in them (not Instrumentals, not red links, not artist or album pages with no blue links, and not song pages that have their lyrics hidden in comment tags, or song pages that miss lyrics tags & or SH or SF but do have lyrics). The nearest thing we currently have is "edit|no lyrics" and as Times said we decided we are not keeping empty lyric pages (bogus positive results, just like many other lyric sites do). So do we keep "no lyrics" lyric pages or not? because if we do, there are millions of lyrics that we don't have and we can create empty pages for...., and if we don't, then edit|no lyrics doesn't fit... ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 14:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If I see red links in Other Songs list I delete them. Blue links appear to be valid pages, but if I do happen to come across one that leads to a page on which there are no lyrics, and is simply a saved page, I flag it for editing. That is if I can't find lyrics myself.

Yes it would be good to delete these incorrectly created song pages, as these would all then revert to red links on artist/album pages, which will correctly indicate that we haven't yet got the lyrics. I don't think we need to do any more than that. I don't think we should categorise them. Like I say, red links speak for themselves. ♫♫Яєdxx ♪♫♪♫♪ActionsWords 16:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Ummm… If you agree they should be deleted, why don't you do that instead of flagging them when you come across them? — 6x9(Talk) 17:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is what I meant by bizarre cases. Like, I once ran into a blank page and meant to add the delete tag. And then, after clicking Edit, voilà, I saw the lyrics between <!-- and -->. I have no idea why anyone would do that, but that was easy, I just pull the lyrics out of the comment.

Another time I saw a page that’s almost completely blank. (It has the page title where you expect the lyrics.) I meant to flag it for deletion but went to check the history just in case it was vandalism, and found that it was the original contributor who “vandalized” it. I got unsure and didn’t flag it.

If there were a category Category:No Lyrics, I would have used it for the second case. I would interpret it as a request for someone knowledgeable to check whether the old version in the history is valid or not. But then deletion would have been equally good. I don’t know.—gniw 00:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that in those cases, the page creators notice that they added the lyrics for a different song, and not knowing what else to do they just remove them. Since this is usually done by IPs we can't very well ask them about it… You can look at the deleted lyrics (via the history tab) and, if you recognise them as being for a different song and don't have the correct ones for the current, flag the page for deletion. If you don't know the song, I suppose you can restore the lyrics and put {{edit|Lyrics might be for a different song}} or something like that at the top. — 6x9(Talk) 00:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen worse pages (0-1 pages in OS and no more) The Request for Edit template is redundant, all Green pages are by default request for edit, even violet can be applied to the example, but then 1000s of pages would equally qualify, same issue with Stub.

Would be nice to either retire these templates or define what they are for... ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 16:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Empty headers are pretty much useless. On the other hand, they don't hurt anyone. So you either give the wikifyer a good workout and replace them with proper links and song lists, or you wait until someone else does it :-)

@Echo: tl:edit allows one to add a reason, which a green star doesn't. So it's not quite redundant. — 6x9(Talk) 17:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess what I'm asking is, what makes Red's example any more urgent than any other artist who has no track list or album header and an os list of 1? We already have a LyricWiki:Requests....:) ∃cho⚡ierr∀ (☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 17:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

What exactly is the problem with that page?—gniw 00:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

It's OK now, but until recently it looked like this. The edit request didn't necessarily make this more urgent, but it could have been used to give the person who created the headers some pointers as to what should be done. — 6x9(Talk) 00:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)